I think "Altered States" states that gerrymandering voting boundaries can alter a state not only in its political geography, but also on the outcome of national presidential elections.

By the way, these mushrooms I picked and ate are bitter, but yet they are wonderful.

Your calling: inspirational speaker to kindergarten students, "This is what you could become if you take candy from the pushers lurking around school".

No disrespect meant, and I don't have any indication that your mind was indeed scrambled by drugs. But you give a very good representation of what it would be like, your mind, if it was scrambled by drugs. So whether it has anything to do with reality, your performance could be used in good, moral service to humankind.

Thank you, that'd be nice.

I mean to call you out. Your snide little piece of rhetoric would shame a third-grader to use on a playground. It is disgusting here on this site. But apparently is the measure of the man you are, in sum a know-it-all who knows nothing and is proud of his ignorance.

But behind the infantile remark - for we know you are not an infant - is the lie. You are a liar and thus an enemy here, and having passed the bounds of civil discourse, are neither entitled to it, nor should receive it. — tim wood

This, addressed to Appoloshit, is my precise feeling for him. Except you, Tim Wood, expressed it so much more nicely than how I will put it here.

Apollofuck is appalling in his slimy stupid non-reason. I seldom hate people on this site, but him I hate. Even 3017Amen is likeable, I like him, despite his being stupider than a doorknob. But he is honest, he gives his heart, and he is a good man. This Appoloklunt is nothing but stupidity dress'd in women's clothes. Or his posts can be likened to "How I suck shit on a philosophy website."

God knows, (figure of speech) we are not all geniuses here, and almost all of us lack a basic grounding in knowledge. But if philosophical skill is a building, and fooloso4 is on the top floor on this website, then I'm on the second floor, and Appolosuckmeoff is in the sub-sub-sub-sub basement, and his attitude is so deep down in the bowels of earth, that he is at danger of breaking through to the magmatic core.

I am just appalled that the moderators tolerate Appolodurfus around here.

Which is it, God or belief in God? Or like me do you hold those to be exactly the same thing? — tim wood

Interesting view.
There were three sons of a man. One was an atheist, the other, a theist. The third one was God.

The atheist and the theist both were ethical. This was so because god existed.

The theist believed in the god, and was moral.

The atheist obviously did not believe in god, but was moral.

These two boys were moral, while one believed in god, the other, did not.

---------------------------

So far so good.

---------------------------
There was a second man, with two sons. One was theist, the other, an atheist, the third, god.

Both the theist and the atheist were immoral.

---------------------------
Third version:

There was a man with two sons. There was no god in their family or in their world.

Both sons were ethical.

---------------------------
Fourth version:
No god, both sons were immoral.


------------------------------------------------

The way I see it, each of the four possibilities are probable, and the probability distribution curve among them is very likely a level curve at 25% for each scenario.

I was not critiquing anything, mind you. — Olivier5

Saying that a line of reasoning lacks in an aspect IS critiquing. And critiquing is okay. But not when the alleged missing piece is in the original. That is invalid critiquing.

I am no longer upset, but I do ask you that in the future you read my posts, whether I left it now, in the past or in the future, carefully, from beginning to end, and that you respond when you understood all parts of it. Thanks.

You're one of the most decent respondents to my posts, along with fooloso4, (there may be others whose monikers don't stand out for me at the moment; my apologies for ommitting them in this list here) and I appreciate it, and I value your contribution. This is why I ask of you to do this.

Don't blame us for finding the fault in your thinking.

Imagine an empty digital photo, say with resolution of 900x900 pixels and 900 colours. It potentially can hold a picture of every planet, star and galaxy that ever was and will ever be, at any arbitrary given time, from every possible angle, every possible altitude. It can hold every photo and movie frame that was ever taken and will be taken, every scene that was ever seen and will be seen, dreamt or imagined by every human or alien that ever was and will ever be. It can also contain every page of every book that existed, exists, and will ever exist... it potentially contains a picture of anything that was and can ever be, a picture of everything that can possibly be, both in reality or imagination, and yet the number of those pictures is not infinite.

Therefore, the universe, along with the number of things, actions, or concepts, is not, and cannot be infinite, not even potentially. Right? — Zelebg

I remember reading and debunking this very same post several years, maybe a decade ago.

Old horse-sticks die hard.

It's also hard to imagine the amount of time and effort I have spent totally in vain trying to tell people precisely why their theories do not hold water. I must have debunked at least a thousand personal pet theories, and the pet theory owners don't mourn over the carcass, because they still believe that their respective beast is still alive.

A bit resembling the Erwin Schrodinger truth: they think the pet is alive and well, while the pet is completely dead.

Complementarity of skills is a good thing in a couple. But there need to be some common ground on values I believe. — Olivier5

Comprehension, on the other hand, and non-superficial reading skills, are very good to have on a philosophy website. What you said here I covered in the first one or two sentences in the same post that you are critiquing. I wish, I wish, I wish people would take themselves seriously. I've given up all hope to be myself taken seriously by others, but to besmirch their own reputation is a sad story to see.

Jesus Christ. He did not even speak of nanodilation and complex flux of large molecules in a viscuous liquid. Even my spoof on the Holy Trinity has more credence than this miasma. It seems that to publish philosophy these days you need three things:
1. A pH.D.
2. A vocabulary and an ability to juxtapose those words, that occur once every three trillion years in the English language.
3. Comprehensibility of final version of paper is optional, but highly jeered at.
4. Mention of qm.

Indeed. The best you can do is ally yourself politically, maritally or otherwise with some who do share enough of your values, in the hope of promoting them. — Olivier5

Yes, I agree. Not only for the general peace and well-being of the parties involved, but also so that you can join forces with those who have the same aim.

Unfortunately when you ally yourself in a marriage, values are important, but so are a lot of other things, too many to mention here, and some of them are unattainable in combination with some others, or it's just fate that does not align you with an ally who is not all lies, so I am saying I've an old man, and still single, because I was wise enough (or chicken enough) in my twenties to fear the horrible burden of being trapped-- ether for me, or for my spouse.

I more and more realize that a good marriage is not so much sex and love and giving and taking, but more like looking out for each other, watching each other's backs. This necessitates the compatibility along with the differences that complement each other. My present gf and I have totally different attributes. She's sociable, I am more introspective. She charms people and gets along with everyone, even when not in friendly terms -- for instance, when she needs to return a merchandize, or get a refund for a trip -- and she gets her will done, while I fix things around the house easily, and know the difference between postmodernism and logical positivism. On top of this, I constantly crack jokes she does not like, and she still smiles and closes one eye to them, while she speaks trivial stuff and I listen intently and make big eyes at what she says, and agree with her all the time. For the two of us it's a small price to pay for the benefits we give and take, and we mutually revel in the joy of the exchange.

You come across as a control freak, whereas you probably are a kind, old, deeply religious man. But you expect others to do what you are not willing to do: to give up their convictions, for nothing but to satisfy your own personal comfort of thinking there is god being accepted.

I am sorry, but you really make cake. Your control comes across as that of a man who has no insight, foresight and has no ability to empathize.

That has advantages though: it makes ethics more fluid and evolutionary. — Olivier5

True, that is an advantage. At the same time that it's a disadvantage, inasmuch as you can't rely on anyone else to follow the same ethics as you do.

The conflict between believers and atheists causes so much harm. — Gregory

Much less than you think. There was a relgion-related mass murder in Canada yesterday. A devout white Christian boy murdered four Muslims, for his own conscience called him to do that. Palestinians and Jews in the middle east are killing each other although their DNA and race and even smell is indistinguishable from the other's.

No, my friend, atheists don't harm the religious, and the religious don't harm the atheists. It is the religious that are in war with the religious and atheists that are in war with atheists.

Atheists should speak that they believe in God and renew the world. The conflict between believers and atheists causes so much harm. — Gregory

Absolutely not. Theists, Christians should speak that they abandoned their belief and think god is just a figment of imagination.

What audacity! You should make yourself to comply with your own wishes, not expect others to go to your crazy ideas.

But by your own reconning, the rule of law is not doing so well in America... — Olivier5

You're right. And neither does morality.

I actually agree with the notion that ethics need to be developed for an atheistic world. And I deny that ethics ever worked very well anywhere in any society. It is a soft rule, you have a choice of accepting of its teachings for what you want to accept, and not accept and make your own those ethical values that are generally forbidden to you... the entire ethical system never worked. (When I said here "you", I meant the general you, not you personally.)

So my point is that being ethical is very noble, but useless. Nobody listens to you who does not want to. And there is no mechanism to replace it.

We are stuck being a species that has high ethical values and expectations, and hardly any specimen of our species (or speciwomen) heed to them.

1) you need a conscience to be good

2) God is your conscience

3) you need God to good

There are good people in the world. — Gregory

2) is false. Ergo, 3 is false. 1) is true, and so is the conclusion.

(Morality is needed) For instance, to justify the need for the rule of law, its importance and value. — Olivier5

Maybe it's needed, but to no avail. America is the most Christian nation and it has the largest jail population in the known world, both in absolute numbers and in relative numbers. Obviously morality is ineffective in satisfying the need you envision its existence is justified for.

My point is rather that, now that "God is dead", we need a secular form (or several) of ethics. — Olivier5

Why? Law in an orderly country like the USA takes care of the lost religious ethics.

In communist countries the ethic dictates of religion were uprooted. There was a lot of fornication throughout the land. Abortions were legalized. Divorces became easy to get. Theft was rampant, almost to the tune of being a national sport.

Interestingly, lying was not encouraged, and so was not murder. Greed was curtailed much more stringently than in the most religious countries. Charity and the binding up of the broken was de-privatized and put in the hand of the state.

So in retrospect, they enforced about the same number of so-called "christian" ethics there as they freed up from needing to heed to; and they were the negative imprint of the Western, American model. In America people don't cheat on their spouses, and single people refrain from being overly promiscuous. They don't steal, and they don't commit fetus murders. But post partum murder rate is 14 times that of what it used to be in Hungary in communist time. Charity is almost non-existent in the USA, when it comes to healing the sick. Everyone lies in America, from the last one-man self-employed businessman, to the largest insurance companies, to the organized media big time, and since Nixon, the presidents don't shy away from it either.

So don't give me that fucking bullshit that god is needed for morality. America is fucking goddamned christian, and their jails are more full of criminals (immorally acting people) than jails in any other country.

Fucking Christian God-enforced goddamned morals... my ass.

Meine Ehre heißt Treue

"My honour is called expensive", direct translation. They assimilated some things from the Jews whom they aimed to eradicate: they bought Ehre (honour) wholesale, and sold it retail. Unfortunately for Hitler, the wholesale price was high when the SS bought theirs, so they could not get rid of it at a profit. Hence, total economic, military and moral collapse of the Third Reich.

You might as well have a thread 'belief in God as necessary for eating cheese'. — Bartricks

Blessed are the Cheesemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

But surely critiquing isn't the same as criticizing. The former is directed at the subject matter while the latter is directed at a person. Ad hominem's aren't usually a part of good critiquing and for good reasons are considered fallacious. — skyblack

I shalt now endeavour to critique your opinion.

Thesis: sometime the distinction that you so aptly described, between critiquing and criticizing, disappears, and for a good reason.

1. Not everyone responds to critiquing.
2. Some who don't respond well simply ignore the counter arguments to their thesis.
3. This is very frustrating to the critics, when the counter arguments are carefully thought out and are apparently valid.
4. The critics will become abusive; they don't utter ad hominems, they simply vent their frustration and call the original offender horrible names.

00000000000000

For some reason the majority of the fallacies used in arguments come from the pens of those who defend their thesis. Most of insults come form the critics once they discover that their arguments won't stick, can't stick to the Original Poster.

Welcome to the boards, SeaOfGems. Please be aware that we exercise here extreme criticalism. This is typical of philosophers these days. So please don't let it get to you if people make unkind comments to your post here.

I hope you will get used to the forum's spirit of fighting very soon, and have fun with philosophy here.

Only the believer himself can know, with any certainty, whether he is truly religious since he is the only person with direct access to his own belief. — Merkwurdichliebe

And God, if the dude is religious. But God ain't tellin' no one.

It's hard to judge people. — Gregory

yet many find it too easy, and that's why they practice it left right and centre.

"Right-wing" has become a pejorative term. Oh! What great times do we live in... — Gus Lamarch

So has "liberal" which is left-wing.

Birds these days must have a tough time when flying. They use both wings.

Why do we dream? I have an anser that serves a functionality. I can't prove my claim, but it's easy to understand.

I read somewhere that we can predict what we will be worried about tomorrow, but not what we will dream tonight.

Someone said that anxiety is an antidote to dreams.

These two statements made me think. I came up with the idea that uses the theory that in the brain loops form in which an idea we find important, keeps on repeating, and the looping creates long-term memories. This looping can get troublesome, if you can't get out of it --- like starting the day with carelessly humming a tune, and by mid-day you want to tear your hair out because you can't get rid of the goddamned tune in your head.

I figure dreams are loop-destroyers. If the loops continued without a reprieve between any two consecutive days, then our days would be consumed with the same worries and anxieties as the previous day. That leads to high inefficiency. Therefore we dream, which is process of destroying the loops. Elements of the loops (several in a day's thinking) get disconnected, and reconnected to the element of the other loops we also want to lose. This is the basis why dreams are bizarre. The water barrel becomes your mother, who marries you and crawls away as a centipede, only to help you pass your calculus exam, during which you pee in the corner of the room, until the room became a barge, which becomes Marge from the Simpsons, etc etc.

The destroying of the loops is essential; the dreams are not predictors of the future but randomly scattered remnants of the recent past.

Thank you, Valentinus.

Also see Graham Priest on Nagarjuna (Aeon Magazine). — Wayfarer

Also see Covid Shaman on "Ganja to Marijuana" (Ibid, The Atlantic, Nov 14-65, vol 23, issue 22.).

The way I understand his approach is that we can itemize our limitations but not what being bound by them permits to exist. So the "actualization" regards being able to be an agent more than making whatever that "self" may be come into existence ex nihilo. — Valentinus

I admire the way in which you have understanding. What you wrote is completely incomprehensible to me. Interesting though, that this is what you call understanding.

Call me a bizarre person, but when I understand things, I link knowledge and logic and new knowledge to alter by rectifying, or else to validate my already existing internal conceptual model of the outside world.

How would you describe the process that you undergo when you practice "understanding"?

Ethics seems to have a very deep connection with epistemology. — TheMadFool

I don't see how you could have got to that conclusion, aside from discovering that some logical statements are always necessarily true.

Wait until you hit the next lesson, and read about
p and ~ p

You will be meeting Satan himself, as the above is always false. (I surmise that would be your perception, since always true leads, according to you, as in the spirited description you provided, to a magnificently morally high standard of always telling the truth.)

Like telling a kid santa clause does not exist. :) — Tiberiusmoon

Very much so.

Truth table for p v ~p
p v ~p
T T FT
F T TF — TheMadFool

I don't understand this notation. there are only two variables, and one result. Why the four truth values? You are naming something or imbuing something with true or false, and I don't know what it is that you do that to. It is not on the initial line; it's in your mind; and you don't tell us what it is. This what you wrote is not comprehensible to a normal philosopher without further explanation.

It's impossible to see how any proof of an afterlife could be either. — Janus

How about this: I die, I see my body buried by mourners. Empirical evidence, slam bang on.

What evidence of afterlife would satisfy a skeptic? I am a skeptic; it would statisfy me, one skeptic, that there is an afterlife.

But you're right, most skeptics would not be satisfied as my experience would be non-transferable.

True it must be fun in the sense of interesting, but don't you acknowledge a dimension of philosophy that may inform the living of life? — Janus

I don't think of philosophy in terms of it
- giving moral guidance
- providing a template for living
- teaching useful, applicable wisdom

at all. Many do, I appreciate that, but they are normally the morally superior, the religious, and the so weak and feeble, that they can't work out each problem on their own, so they will use "life philosophies".

I think of philosophy as a field of inquiry, to find answers to those questions that have not been answered by science, yet they can be figured out speculatively.

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know. — god must be atheist

my epistemological manifesto
— god must be atheist

To know just is to believe, unless it is direct. I see it is raining, therefore I know it is raining. — Janus

ever been in a state of optical illusion, or normal delusion?

Nothing was implied that meant you believed your own moral code was correct. — Benj96

Either (1) everyone knows what morality comprises, or else (2) nobody knows, but they do know that it exists, they just don't know what it is.

If (1), then everyone takes a note of their morality, as compared to the ideal. they score themselves on a sheet, hand it in, and someone tallies the good vs the bad performance of people as to their adherence of their moral code. The best and the worst are easily identified this way.

If (2), then everyone is at liberty to 2.1. believe that they are most moral, since everyone tends to adhere to their OWN personal moral code, in lack of an absolute moral code to their knowledge; and 2.2. they are at a liberty to choose their own moral code, in lack of an absolute moral code to their knowledge, which makes their adherence to stay moral according to their own criteria easy.

So is your question presupposing that everyone knows what the absolute moral good and bad are? No, you expressly said that only the two end guys know the true moral code.

The logic of this spectrum would suggest that only the ends, the extreme poles of morality see the true distinction between good and bad. A perfect liar and a perfect truth teller. In order to be the worst most corrupted person possible one would have to understand their antithesis (the good) and reject it- so as to never accidentally do something beneficial for someone else. And vice versa.

Everyone in the centre cannot identify who is who. How could they? everyone in the middle is a mixture - both good and bad traits. Their moral compass isn’t perfectly calibrated — Benj96

According to this, only the two end guys know what morality comprises.

This is what I took as starting point, then if you did mean what you wrote, why are you dinging me for taking it as nobody else knows what morality is?

This question and thread I am abandoning for I believe the original post was written in an ambiguous way, and now you are moving the goal posts.

I think truth and knowledge is good for atheists, scientists and materialists, but it is detrimental to theists, Christians and the otherwise religious.

I disagree. Photons are massless. Nothing at the speed of light can possess mass. And they are most definitely energy. Wavelengths don’t carry the energy they are a measure of the intensity of the energy and it’s ability to penetrate matter. For example the light you can see from the sun can’t generally harm you but the shorter wavelength UV (higher frequency) light can give you a sunburn as it is of higher energy. — Benj96

On the surface I agree with you. The newest thought, however, and I described it in my same post, I don't know how you were able to miss that part, deals with this. It has to do with the ether. It is not the same ether as they thought the universe was filled with up to and including the middle of the nineteenth century. They figure there is a material element to space, which enables light to travel as a wave form, and enables the bending of space.

If and only if that theory is true, light can't transmit energy without the employment of matter.

I don't know if that theory is true or not. There is a raging battle going on in physics circles regarding that. Ether has a bad connotation for its past use up to two hundred years ago; but it is very possible for it to exist.

5. What other physical processes besides switching operations can produce consciousness? — RogueAI

Whatever processes our brains employ.